


Take the World As It Is

by Stephquiem



Series: Going Back [9]
Category: Animorphs (TV), Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Complicated Relationships, Disassociation, Gen, School Dances, Self-Insert, The author of this fic has never been to a school dance in her life, ride or die shorm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2020-12-16 04:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21029921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stephquiem/pseuds/Stephquiem
Summary: Life--and the war--goes on, whether you're up to facing it or not.Takes place during #33 The Illusion.





	1. Scenes

The Chee mostly left me alone for awhile. I spent most of the rest of the day in my room. Around dinnertime, Mr. King knocked on my door and said I should eat something, he'd gone out and gotten me something, wouldn't I at least try it? The "something" turned out to be _avgolemono_ from the one Greek restaurant in town, and he left with it a couple extra lemon wedges and a pepper shaker. I couldn't remember telling him that it was my favorite, or that restaurants never made it precisely the way I liked it, but I must have at some point, and he remembered, and it made me cry again.

They didn't ask questions. At least not yet. They let me cry and mope and hole up in my room for that first day, with just the occasional gentle reminder to eat, and to feel free to come downstairs when I felt up to company.

On the second day, Erek called Cassie.

There was a knock on my bedroom door. "Steph? It's Cassie. Can I come in?" When I didn't answer, the door opened tentatively, and from my spot on the bed, buried under the covers, I saw Cassie poke her head in. "Oh, _Steph_."

I forced myself into a half-sitting position. I looked pathetic. I knew I did. "Did Erek tell you?"

"Yeah." Cassie stepped more fully into the room, closing the door behind her. She looked around--at me, at my rumpled, day old clothes, at the blinds that I'd shut tight to keep the morning sun out of my eyes--then asked, "Can I give you a hug?"

"Okay." She came over, sat down on the edge of my bed, and put her arms around me. I returned the hug, burying my face in her shoulder and trying not to cry all over her t-shirt. Miserably failing. She smelled like the barn and soap and hand lotion, and she rubbed soothing little circles on my back and I felt a strange little ache in my chest that I hadn't even noticed was there until now ease up a little. I could not remember the last time someone had hugged me. Priton tended not to touch people--a mixture of personal preference and acknowledging that most people who knew what he was were at least somewhat uncomfortable around him. Erek touched me, or let me touch him, when I was on my own--let me lean against him on the couch, held my hand when I needed support--and might have hugged me if I'd thought to ask, but I hadn't.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Cassie asked.

"Later." I'd have to, but I still felt too mixed up to work it out enough to talk about it with the others.

"Do you want me to tell the others for you?"

_Yes. _"No," I said. "No, I need to do it." I sniffled pathetically. "I know I'm being stupid," I said, like an apology.

"You're not being stupid," Cassie said, sounding so sure that I wanted to believe her.

"Yes I am. Crying over a stupid Yeerk." I laughed a humorless, watery laugh. "A stupid Yeerk who won't even miss me."

Cassie hummed, but didn't comment.

* * *

In the end, it was all very simple. There was, after all, nothing we could do now.

We called a meeting in Cassie's barn. It was just the seven of us--there was some big Sharing meeting that Erek, Tom and Aftran had to attend after school when we agreed to meet. I probably could have waited--Priton's absence could have easily gotten lost in the chaos of two Rachels and the Anti-Morphing Ray. But it was like a band-aid. I had to just rip it off.

It would have been nice to have the moral support anyway, though. At least Cassie was there, standing next to me as I told the others that Priton was gone. About the way he'd left.

There was a long pause after I finished. I leaned back against the pillar I had positioned myself next to--it was where Priton usually chose to stand during meetings, and I hadn't even thought about it before taking up the same position. But the feeling of something solid behind me felt grounding, if nothing else. 

I didn't know what to expect the others' reactions to be. So much had happened. So much had changed. A year ago, Priton's abrupt departure would have been suspicious, would have been cause for alarm. A serious breach of our security. But things were different now. Priton wasn't an enemy Yeerk, he was a friend and a comrade, and _he saved Tom. _It still felt like a betrayal, but it was different than what any of us might have expected. And it wasn't like when Cassie quit--there was no time to reason or make Priton change his mind. It was done already. There was nothing left to do but deal with the aftermath.

"Should we be worried?" Jake finally asked.

I took a deep, steadying breath. "He wouldn't betray us," I said. "I think... I mean, I don't know why he left _now_. But I don't think he ever intended to stay out the whole war. Just..." I shrugged. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I didn't really know anything at all about Priton's motivations. I thought he wanted to protect his human family. I thought he wanted to gain the morphing power. I thought he might even care enough about our little group of freedom fighters that he wanted to help us succeed. I thought... well, it didn't really matter in the end what I thought. Clearly I didn't know anything at all. 

"How are _you _doing?" Cassie asked. It had been a couple days since she'd come by. I'd left my bedroom two days in a row unprompted, and hadn't looked quite so much like a strong wind would blow me over when I peeked at myself in the mirror that morning. I was calling that fine progress.

"I'm fine," I said. "Of course I'm fine. I'm free, what could ever be better?"

Tactfully, no one commented.

* * *

A little more than a week after Priton left, I dropped in on Aftran and Tom. Mr. King drove me so I wouldn't have to lug the portable pool onto the bus. 

Part of me wanted to keep it. Like a keepsake. Stupid, I know. It wouldn't get any use now. It wasn't like Priton was coming back. We might have moved Erek's old captive Yeerk there, but so far we hadn't gotten around to it, and as it was, there was a whole room of the house that I couldn't bring myself to go into now. Removing the pool might help. It might not. But the makeshift pool that Erek's old Yeerk was using was actually bigger, anyway, and that struck me as the kinder option, considering it was where he was going to live for the foreseeable future.

It was early afternoon on a Saturday when Mr. King dropped me off. He had errands to run around town, so though he offered to wait, I told him to go on without me. 

I rang the doorbell, and was immediately greeted by loud barking and, a minute later, someone saying, as they opened the door, "Back, Homer. No, come _on." _It made me smile a little.

The face that greeted me was Tom's, as startlingly blank as when he had stood in my kitchen. "Oh. Hi, Tom." I hefted the portable pool in my hands, as if in explanation. "I brought this for Aftran. Can I come in?"

"Sure." Tom stepped back to let me through the doorway before closing the front door behind me. "She's here, by the way. Y'know, _here_," he clarified, tapping his temple. "Just... we're practicing. The whole sharing thing." I nodded along in understanding. "It's... weird. And harder than we thought it was going to be, honestly."

I set the pool down in the foyer. "Yeah, I can imagine. You've got two sets of instincts that are trying to battle with each other." 

Tom nodded, then seemed to hesitate. Finally, he said, "Priton told Aftran it gets easier with practice."

I didn't flinch at his name. It was a small victory, but I was taking it. "Right. Yeah. He'd know, I guess." Not that we'd done it that much, in the grand scheme of things. More in the early days, when we'd spend all of our time at the library to get out of the barn. It was when we were "alone" the most--or at least, away from the others--and really, in those days, that leveled out to being close enough to a fifty-fifty split to satisfy me and keep Priton from getting cranky like he tended to when he didn't have control for awhile. Neither of us particularly enjoyed giving up control. Mostly. It was a necessary sacrifice to make our painfully uneven partnership a little more egalitarian. Except...

Except nothing felt right without Priton anymore. It hadn't for a very long time.

"Anyone else home?" I asked, changing the subject. The house was quiet. Even Homer had wandered off--I could hear him somewhere behind me in the house, at his water dish.

"No," Tom said. "Mom and Dad went grocery shopping. And... I _think _Jake's at Marco's." His face did a little twitch that I thought might have been a smile.

"Probably at Marco's," I told him, shrugging. 

We stood there in silence for another minute, seeming to have run out of conversation topics--or maybe the limit for what either of us could do just then--until I started to say, "Well, I guess--"

"Are you okay?"

"Of course," I answered, automatically. I'd been asked the same question many, many times over the last week. I wondered if lying about the answer enough would eventually make it true. "It's supposed to be easier for voluntaries, right?"

Tom didn't respond right away, and for a second I thought I'd said the wrong, insensitive thing. I should apologize. I should--

Tom's expression suddenly changed--which is to say, he suddenly had any expression to speak of at all. "Steph? It's Aftran speaking." Their tone was oddly gentle, like they were talking to a small, frightened child.

"Hey, Aftran." I crossed my arms over my chest. Even though she already knew it was there, I nodded at the portable pool at our feet, saying, "I thought you could use this."

"Thank you," Aftran said. "You know, Steph, if there's anything you want or need to talk about, we're happy to help. You've done a lot for us, we can return the favor."

"I really haven't." I felt the telltale pinpricks behind my eyes, like I was going to start crying again. I looked away. "It was mostly Priton. And Cassie. I just agreed with them or was along for the ride." Somehow, that felt worse now. Really, _everything_ felt worse now, but now it felt like there was no real reason for me to be here. _Priton _changed the timeline, and now Priton was gone, and I was here, on my own, with no real direction, and nothing to do except make myself useful until someone decided it was time for me to go home.

"I just think you shouldn't be alone."

"I'm not alone," I said, sounding not at all as reassuring as I'd hoped I would. "I've got the others. I've got the Chee. I'm fine."

"Okay," Aftran said, holding up her hands as if in surrender, and for a second, I thought that would be the end of it. Of course, it wasn't. "I just... I know this is probably a very bad time to bring this up. But I wondered if you wouldn't consider... taking on someone else. A Peace Movement Yeerk--"

"No." I shook my head hard, feeling the anxiety at the very idea coiling in my gut. Surely, a new Yeerk would only make this feeling of not truly belonging to my body much, much worse. And it felt... too complicated. There was too much, too much that I couldn't share with anyone, that I had only shared with Priton because I hadn't had a choice. There was still all this time left. So many things that could go wrong if the wrong person knew too much. We'd "fixed" things, but it wasn't over yet. There was still so much and so many variables.

And God, I didn't realize until Priton was gone how lonely this was going to be. 

"You don't have to, of course," Aftran was saying. "I just wanted to offer it as an option. A Yeerk might be helpful for... trauma."

I laughed--or at least, made a sound that could have been a laugh. "I'm not traumatized." Aftran looked skeptical. "I'm not. We were... friends. No trauma. Really."

"Okay," Aftran said, slowly. I was sure she didn't believe me. "Grief, then."

"Maybe," I conceded. "But I still think I have to say no." I looked down at the portable pool, sitting harmlessly next to me, and thought of how I hadn't been able to bring myself to go into the room it had occupied. Mr. King had gotten it out for me when I'd asked and, blissfully, had not commented on how strange a request it was. "I'm not ready. I might never be ready. Sorry."

"You don't need to apologize," Aftran assured me. "It's your choice. That's kind of the whole point." Finally, she leaned down to pick up the pool by its case's handle. "Thanks again for this. It'll be good to have it as an option."

"Great," I said, and I started inching around them to get to the door. Aftran didn't make a move to stop me, though she was still looking at me with concern. "I hope it's helpful. I'll... see you guys." And then I was pulling open the front door and darting outside before anything else could be said. Or I could realize that I didn't remember how to get to the nearest bus stop.

It was fine. I'd figure it out. I was going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Avgolemono](https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/avgolemono-chicken-soup-rice) is a Greek egg-and-lemon soup, and it's delicious. The best I've had was at the restaurant where I first tried it as a kid, and I have basically spent the rest of my life trying to recreate it every time I get it elsewhere. Always needs more lemon and pepper.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy "Steph commenting on how little Priton cares and other characters being varying levels of extremely skeptical" because... frankly, I _am_ that obtuse in real life. In fairness, Priton is very good at giving mixed signals.
> 
> Also, if you're thinking it's weird that Erek isn't in this chapter, considering my usual M.O., worry not. He's in the next one.


	2. Iris

Out of everyone, Erek treated me the least like I was made of glass, and honestly, I was grateful. He didn't ask me if I was okay, because we both knew that I wasn't. With everyone else, I felt like I was performing. At least with Erek, I didn't have to pretend I was coping with everything.

That didn't mean he wasn't annoying sometimes, though.

"I'm not moping," I insisted.

"Of course not," Erek said mildly. "You've barely left the house in weeks, switched to a mostly ice cream-based diet, and are unironically watching daytime soaps. Definitely not moping." He paused, then added, "I have considered you might actually be Ax in morph, though."

Why, I wondered, couldn't I have ended up friends with one of the nice, non-sarcastic Chee instead?

Really, though, in the end it was my own fault. And in the end, it was embarrassingly easy to get me out of the house for something other than a meeting or a mission.

"You know," Erek said to me one day, his tone as casual as it ever was, "there's a dance happening this weekend."

"I know," I said, without thinking. I only realized my mistake when I saw Erek's slow, knowing smile. Damn it.

"I was thinking, it might be nice," Erek went on, smiling that infuriating smile that said he knew he had me. "We could do something normal. I don't think we've ever done something normal together that wasn't watching television."

"I'm pretty sure every time any of us tries to 'do something normal,' it backfires on us spectacularly."

Erek nodded his head in acknowledgment. "Sure, but you already know what's going to happen." He shrugged. "Do you want to see it?"

Yes. Yes, I very much did.

* * *

Rachel turned up the day of the dance, hair and makeup implements in tow, which I thought was definitely overkill. She also brought a dress that she swore to me had been hanging in her closet for _ages, _though it fit suspiciously well considering I was half a foot shorter than she was and had a significantly rounder body shape. 

Still. I submitted myself to her machinations, because she wasn't doing anything that I minded having done to me--I just didn't have the skill or the patience to for it. And it was _Rachel, _who, until very recently, had unwittingly had a timer counting down to her death at the tender age of sixteen. Right then, she could have done nearly anything and I wouldn't have complained.

Well. Almost.

I'd been sitting on a stool in the bathroom, patiently letting Rachel put foundation on me while trying not to squirm or let on how much it made me feel like a doll. I'd asked her a question about what she was going to do for herself, and she was saying something, and I was listening, I _was. _Right up until I felt something brush against my ear and I nearly leaped out of my seat. 

"No, no, no!"

I don't remember moving. One moment, I was there on the stool, and the next I was pressed against the closed bathroom door, a feeling of confused panic in my chest, as Rachel stared at me, still holding the foundation brush, poised in her hand as it had been a second ago when it touched my ear.

"I was just... trying to blend," she said, sounding uncertain.

I took several deep breaths before I said, "Right. Maybe... let's just skip that part?" I folded my arms over my chest, feeling shaky and stupid, and like I should apologize for freaking out at Rachel when she was trying to do something nice for me, and taking time away from doing the same things for herself to boot. Not that there was much I thought she needed to do, anyway--it was _Rachel. _Still.

Rachel set the brush down on the bathroom counter. Then she went into her bag again before pulling out her makeup wipes, and handing one to me wordlessly.

"Thank you," I said, embarrassed. After a second's hesitation, I went back to the stool and sat down.

* * *

After such an auspicious start, I really shouldn't have been surprised by how things played out.

It was very strange being in the school. Schools after hours always feel almost supernatural to me. At night, when the building is mostly empty, it’s easy to imagine the spirits of bored students and cantankerous lunch ladies and overworked teachers, roaming the halls. I wondered if ghosts found silence calming or lonely.

I _tried_ to have a good time. I danced with Erek. I “danced” with Marco--really, he spun me around until I threatened to puke on him. Then he’d laughed and gone off to bother someone else. 

I tried, too, to see if I could find a familiar face in the crowd--not in the students, but in the chaperones. I don't know why. Stupid, masochistic curiosity, maybe. There was exactly one person who I thought would understand how I was feeling, and if he was there, I wanted to see him. But he wasn't there, and there was nothing for me to do except try and enjoy myself. And I _did _try. I did. 

I was fine. And then, suddenly, I wasn’t fine anymore.

“I’m going to find the bathroom,” I told Erek. And then, almost as an afterthought, “Stay out of trouble.”

Erek cocked his head curiously at me, wondering, I thought, if I was warning him about anything in particular. “I’ll do my best.”

The bathroom was too crowded with other girls, fixing their hair or their makeup, gossiping about people they knew. I slipped into a stall and waited for them to leave. Suddenly it felt like my lungs weren’t working. I drew in breaths and still felt my chest burn like no oxygen reached them.

Stupid. It was stupid to miss him. He certainly wasn’t missing me. 

And probably worst of all, my body felt wrong without him. It didn’t make any sense. I hadn’t liked giving up control of my body. I _hadn't. _At the best of times, it felt like I was a puppet, being moved along by someone else, with nothing but the trust that Priton wouldn't do anything with my body that I wouldn't do for myself. At worst, it was like being subsumed into someone else. I didn't like it. What I'd liked was _Priton, _his company and the reassurance of not being alone in this universe where I did not belong. And just... him. He was grumpy and abrasive and would rather pick a fight about nothing than ever admit he was scared of anything, but he was also funny, and shockingly gentle and kind in his own, awkward way, and God, I _missed him. _

I eventually left the bathroom and headed back to the gym. When I got there, though, I saw Erek talking to a group of people. I backed out before I could be spotted. I couldn't handle strangers right now. I shouldn't have come--that much was obvious. Here, I was surrounded by strangers. Really, I was in a world _full _of nothing _but_ strangers, but at least if I'd stayed home I could have had the comfort of something familiar _enough_.

With nothing else to do, I wandered the hall for a bit until I found a classroom that was unlocked. 

Was this it? I wondered as I fell into one of the desk chairs. Was this the thing that finally broke me? A long horrible war. So incomprehensibly far from home that there wasn’t even a way to measure the distance. Burdened with knowledge that no one should have. I hadn’t realized how lonely it was to live alone with that. If I tried hard enough, maybe I could convince myself that that was the only reason I missed Priton, that the rest didn't matter. 

I really don't know how much time passed. That was something that was happening with alarming frequency these days, when I was by myself. I'd go into a room for something--didn't matter what it was--and when I'd come out again, I had no concept of how long I'd been there, whether it had been a few minutes or an hour, and only the vaguest, if any, idea of what I'd been doing. It wasn't even every time I was alone--I was alone all the time, now, if it happened every time I would have gone insane by this point. Unless I had already, and that's just what this was. Maybe everything was just a delusion and I didn't realize before because it _felt _real when there was someone else there with me. Does the madman know he's mad? That the delusion isn't real?

I don't know anymore.

I didn't realize I was sitting in view of hallway. I'd closed the classroom door behind me when I'd entered, but there was a small window to see through. I wasn't _really_ hiding. I just needed to get away for a minute and didn't particularly want to be found, by a teacher or a student. Or Chapman.

The door opened, and I jumped out of my chair, scrambling to think of an excuse, an explanation for why I was where I wasn't supposed to be--

"There you are," Erek said. "I was wondering where you'd gotten to." 

I gestured around me, as if that indicated anything at all. "Just needed to get away for a minute, 's all."

Erek considered me for a moment--I could almost here the unspoken and very unnecessary _are you okay?--_before stepping through the doorway and quietly closing the door behind him. His hologram facade didn't change, but I thought I saw the air around the door shimmer a little. If you didn't know to look for it, you might think it was a trick of the light, or that you'd imagined it, since a second later it was gone. Unless, of course, you lived with the Chee. I didn't know what Erek was projecting behind him, but I was sure no one out in the hallway would be seeing through the window now.

"Thanks," I said, sliding back into the chair I'd just vacated.

Erek nodded. "I'm sorry."

I stared at him blankly. "For what?"

"For making you come," Erek answered. His expression _did _look guilty. "It was a bad idea and I shouldn't have pressured you into it. I'm sorry."

"Oh." It really said something about how my life was going that it took me a minute to remember how you were supposed to respond to an apology. "It's okay. You didn't really pressure me. I wanted to come." Erek looked understandably skeptical. "Hey, did they play 'Iris'?"

"What?"

"You know. The Goo Goo Dolls song."

"Yes?"

I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. "Worth it, then." Erek just looked confused, but weirdly, that made me feel a little better. Our whole relationship had basically been founded on me befuddling Erek like this. It felt reassuringly normal. I needed something normal to hold onto just then.

Erek sighed, but he was also smiling a little. "Do you want to go home?"

I did, but I said, "Give me a minute." I was feeling better. Marginally, anyway. _Present_, at least. Erek nodded and waited patiently, standing by the door like a sentry, giving me space. I wasn't sure that was what I needed--I wasn't sure what I needed _at all_\--but I appreciated it anyway. As I sat there, though, getting my bearings, i did think of one thing I needed that, maybe, Erek could give me. 

I debated asking him for almost a full minute, before finally, "Hey Erek? Do you know Ben Harrison?"

Erek blinked, his expression surprised, then confused. "Ben Harrison?"

"Yeah. Uh... history teacher. Mid-forties? Joined the Sharing... five years ago, maybe?"

"Yes, I knew him," Erek said, still looking confused. "Not _personally, _I never spoke to him, but I know who he was."

My heart was suddenly beating very fast in my chest. "Was?"

"He disappeared from Sharing meetings a couple years ago." Erek shrugged. "I assumed his Yeerk got transferred somewhere else. Why?" 

I didn't answer. I was suddenly very glad I was sitting down.

"Steph? Who is he?"

It took me a couple tries to get the words out, "He was Priton's host. Before me."

I watched understanding dawn on Erek's face. It occurred to me, belatedly, that Priton wouldn't want me to tell anyone--maybe least of all Erek--something so revealingly personal. But Priton wasn't here, and what he wanted didn't matter. Even if it did, I was sure he would want to know _this_. 

"He might have made a run for it," Erek offered. "The invasion's pretty concentrated here, there's still plenty of places he could have gone to stay under the radar."

I thought of that glimpse of Ben's stepdaughter through a bus window. Or Priton had thought it was her, anyway. We hadn't really gotten a good look. "He has a family. A wife and a kid."

Erek grimaced. "I could look into it," he offered.

"What, really?"

"I don't know that I could find anything," Erek said. "If he's run off, he could be literally anywhere."

I nodded. "And if he'd been taken, we'd know already." I shuddered a little. And if neither of those scenarios were the case...

"Right. But I can give it a try."

"Thank you." It was something else to worry about, on a very long and growing list.

"Of course," Erek said, as if there was never any question. "Are you ready to go now?"

"Yeah." I pushed myself out of my seat and crossed the classroom to the door, which Erek held open for me. Out in the hallway, I looped my arm through his. "Have you talked to Jake yet?"

Erek started at my question, then laughed. "No. I was going to, but then I went looking for you instead."

"Well, let's go find him so we can get out of here, then," I said, tugging at his arm to turn us toward the doors that led outside. As I did, I caught a familiar scent that reminded me of something. "Why do you smell like cigarettes?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, when I started writing this chapter, I wasn't expecting it to get dark, but then half-way through we've got disassociation and GB!Steph directly quoting Tobias' "does the madman know he's mad?" bit from #23. 
> 
> True story: one time, my cousin was doing my make up for a family wedding, and she tried to blend my foundation into my ears. It went down only a little better than it does here. I'm pretty sure _my_ ear phobia is a combination of early childhood trauma and Animorphs. GB!Steph can at least feel less crazy about hers, since she has the added experience of being a Controller.
> 
> I wish I had more excuses to write Ben in Going Back. A couple years ago, I wrote an AU version of this chapter where Ben _was_ here, and part of me is tempted to post it as a Going Back Outtake, but most of it gets repurposed elsewhere, making it redundant. We'll come back to him, I promise.
> 
> It's also worth noting that Priton has introduced himself four times: Once to GB!Steph (The Pied Piper, Ch. 2), once to Erek (The Pied Piper, Ch. 4), once to the other Animorphs and Aftran (Falling Up, Ch. 3) and once to Tom (Once and Future, Ch. 3). In each case, he's introduced himself by his full name--except to Erek. Because Erek is the only one who would have any inkling of who he was before. It only took one and a half years and seven Parts to get there, but we finally got the payoff for something I started setting up a long time ago. In case anyone still had doubts that I plan ahead.
> 
> Tune in next time for... a haircut, a wedding, and me staring into the abyss that is the mid-to-late 30s. Maybe a Plato reference, because Atlantis.


End file.
